Don Ro
Datos Biográficos
| ID | 3591772 |
|---|---|
| NOMBRE | Don Ro |
| NOMBRES | Don |
| APELLIDO | Ro |
| FIRMA | RO D |
| AFILIACIONES | University of Cape Town |
| ORCID | 0000-0003-1813-3111 |
| VERIFICADO | Sí |
| TOTAL DE OBRAS | 40 |
| TOTAL DE CITAS | 38 |
| TOTAL COMO AUTOR | 40 |
| TOTAL COMO EDITOR | 0 |
| PRIMER AÑO DE PUBLICACIÓN | 1971 |
| AÑO MÁS RECIENTE DE PUBLICACIÓN | 2025 |
| ÍNDICE H | 4 |
Gender, Confidence, and the Mismeasure of Intelligence, Competitiveness and Literacy
Modeling Norm-Governed Communities with Conditional Games
Most social scientists agree that informal norms constrain available equilibria in most human interactions. However, they do not agree on how to model them: economists often make them derivative of individual preferences, while a broader tradition in social theory understands them as exogenous social facts. Non-cooperative game theory more naturally accommodates the economists’ approach. However, attention is increasingly attracted to recent work…
Scientific metaphysics and social science
Recently, philosophers have developed an extensive literature on social ontology that applies methods and concepts from analytic metaphysics. Much of this is entirely abstracted from, and unconcerned with, social science. However, Epstein (2015) argues explicitly that analytic social metaphysics, provided its account of ontological ‘grounding’ is repaired in specific ways, can rescue social science from explanatory impasses into which he thinks i…
Comparative Cognitive Science and Convergent Evolution
Comparative cognitive science of humans has tended to overwhelmingly emphasize similarities and differences between humans and other living hominids, particularly chimpanzees and bonobos. In thus under-emphasizing convergent evolution, this skew systematically misidentifies several crucial explanatory targets, particularly where cultural evolution is concerned. While concentration within the hominid and wider primate lines can tell us much about …
Endogenous choice of institutional punishment mechanisms to promote social cooperation
Sacha Bourgeois-Gironde, The Mind Under the Axioms
Insofar as decision theory is regarded as a device for application to empirical choice data, it might be thought odd that it is based on axioms. ‘Laws of nature’, after all, is just a metaphor unless we think, as perhaps Newton did, that units of matter operate under divine orders. The father of modern decision theory, Savage took the view, made explicit following his confrontation with the nuisance from Allais, that his great achievement is a no…
What science can do for democracy
Political scientists have conventionally assumed that achieving democracy is a one-way ratchet. Only very recently has the question of “democratic backsliding” attracted any research attention. We argue that democratic instability is best understood with tools from complexity science. The explanatory power of complexity science arises from several features of complex systems. Their relevance in the context of democracy is discussed. Several polic…
Stability of democracies
The idea that democracy is under threat, after being largely dormant for at least 40 years, is looming increasingly large in public discourse. Complex systems theory offers a range of powerful new tools to analyse the stability of social institutions in general, and democracy in particular. What makes a democracy stable? And which processes potentially lead to instability of a democratic system? This paper offers a complex systems perspective on …
Harro Maas, Economic Methodology
Harro Maas says at the outset of his introduction to Economic Methodology that it is unusual in not being written from the perspective of the philosophy of science. It is clear enough what he means by this: the book isn’t organized in terms of the standard philosophy of science headline topics of theory, argument forms, rationality, explanation, causation and so forth. But in a more substantive sense he’s wrong to say this, because he’s written j…
The Psychology of Human Risk Preferences and Vulnerability to Scare-Mongers
The Internet and social media have opened niches for political exploitation of human dispositions to hyper-alarmed states that amplify perceived threats relative to their objective probabilities of occurrence. Researchers should aim to observe the dynamic “ramping up” of security threat mechanisms under controlled experimental conditions. Such research necessarily begins from a clear model of standard baseline states, and should involve adding tr…
Criterion-related and construct validity of the Problem Gambling Severity Index in a sample of South African gamblers
The Problem Gambling Severity Index, the scored module of the Canadian Problem Gambling Index, is a population-based survey instrument that is becoming the preferred epidemiological tool for estimating the prevalence of disordered gambling. While some validation evidence for the Problem Gambling Severity Index is available, very little is known about its psychometric characteristics in developing countries or in countries the populations of which…
Scientific Metaphysics
Original essays by leading philosophers of science explore the question of whether metaphysics can and should be naturalised - conducted as part of natural science. They engage with a range of approaches and disciplines to argue that if metaphysics is to be capable of identifying objective truths, it must be continuous with and inspired by science.
Coordination and the Foundations of Social Intelligence
This article discusses the thesis that human intelligence in evolutionary history led from the need to meet the needs of social interactions. The evolution of human coordination capacities was not simply a single ascent up one complexity gradient. Social intelligence hypotheses are intended as accounts of the early coevolution of sociality and intelligence that facilitated team reasoning in small family bands. A major application of global game t…
Getting Economics Exactly Backwards
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Naturalism
Social Discounting and Externalizing Behavior Problems in Boys
Social discounting refers to the fact that most people assign more value to the welfare of close affiliates than they do to the welfare of distant affiliates—they discount the latter compared to the former. We report the first study to apply a social discounting paradigm to boys. We were particularly interested in investigating the relations between social discounting, age, and externalizing behavior problems (antisocial behavior). Results showed…
The Alleged Coupling-Constitution Fallacy and the Mature Sciences
This chapter discusses the plausibility of the criticism against the thesis that external factors causally influence cognition and that they are, consequently, partly constitutive of cognition. The discussion should not be taken as implicitly proposing that the opposite theory is true, although the works of Adams and Aizawa suggest that they are defending internalism. This can be attributed to the fact that systems are, by definition, bounded; on…
PHILIP MIROWSKI The Effortless Economy of Science
Ontic Structural Realism and Economics
Ontic structural realism (OSR) is crucially motivated by empirical discoveries of fundamental physics. To this extent its potential to furnish a general metaphysics for science may appear limited. However, OSR also provides a good account of the progress that has been achieved over the decades in a formalized special science, economics. Furthermore, this has a basis in the ontology presupposed by economic theory, and is not just an artifact of fo…
Francesco Guala The Methodology of Experimental Economics
Every Thing Must Go
In this book, the authors argue that the only kind of metaphysics that can contribute to objective knowledge is one based specifically on contemporary science as it really is, and not on philosophers' a priori intuitions, common sense, or simplifications of science.
H. sapiens as ecologically special
Notions of Cause
We discuss Russell's 1913 essay arguing for the irrelevance of the idea of causation to science and its elimination from metaphysics as a precursor to contemporary philosophical naturalism. We show how Russell's application raises issues now receiving much attention in debates about the adequacy of such naturalism, in particular, problems related to the relationship between folk and scientific conceptual influences on metaphysics, and to the unif…
Evolutionary game theory and the normative theory of institutional design
In this article, I critically respond to Herbert Gintis's criticisms of the behavioral-economic foundations of Ken Binmore's game-theoretic theory of justice. Gintis, I argue, fails to take full account of the normative requirements Binmore sets for his account, and also ignores what I call the ‘scale-relativity’ considerations built into Binmore's approach to modeling human evolution. Paul Seabright's criticism of Binmore, I note, repeats these …
Development dilemmas
Introduction Don Ross and Melvin Ayogu Part One: General Perspectives 1. Finance for Development Joseph Stiglitz 2. Globalization: Less Than Meets The Ear? Robert Bates 3. Philosophical Foundations of Normative Economics Daniel Hausman 4. Development Theory and the Philosophies of Science Harold Kincaid 5. The Political Economy of Statistical Evidence: Economic Data Problems in Developing Countries and Their Impact on Empirical Research Hashem De…
Metalinguistic signalling for coordination amongst social agents
Emotions as Strategic Signals
In this article, we ask how much, if anything, of Robert Frank's (1988, 2004) theory of emotions as evolved strategic commitment devices can survive rejection of its underlying game-theoretic model. Frank's thesis is that emotions serve to prevent people from reneging on threats and promises with enough reliability to support cooperative equilibria in prisoner's dilemmas and similar games with inefficient dominant equilibria. We begin by showing …
Evolutionary game theory and the normative theory of institutional design
In this article, I critically respond to Herbert Gintis's criticisms of the behavioral-economic foundations of Ken Binmore's game-theoretic theory of justice. Gintis, I argue, fails to take full account of the normative requirements Binmore sets for his account, and also ignores what I call the ‘scale-relativity’ considerations built into Binmore's approach to modeling human evolution. Paul Seabright's criticism of Binmore, I note, repeats these …
Ontic Structural Realism and Economics
Ontic structural realism (OSR) is crucially motivated by empirical discoveries of fundamental physics. To this extent its potential to furnish a general metaphysics for science may appear limited. However, OSR also provides a good account of the progress that has been achieved over the decades in a formalized special science, economics. Furthermore, this has a basis in the ontology presupposed by economic theory, and is not just an artifact of fo…
What science can do for democracy
Political scientists have conventionally assumed that achieving democracy is a one-way ratchet. Only very recently has the question of “democratic backsliding” attracted any research attention. We argue that democratic instability is best understood with tools from complexity science. The explanatory power of complexity science arises from several features of complex systems. Their relevance in the context of democracy is discussed. Several polic…
Social Discounting and Externalizing Behavior Problems in Boys
Social discounting refers to the fact that most people assign more value to the welfare of close affiliates than they do to the welfare of distant affiliates—they discount the latter compared to the former. We report the first study to apply a social discounting paradigm to boys. We were particularly interested in investigating the relations between social discounting, age, and externalizing behavior problems (antisocial behavior). Results showed…
Notions of Cause
We discuss Russell's 1913 essay arguing for the irrelevance of the idea of causation to science and its elimination from metaphysics as a precursor to contemporary philosophical naturalism. We show how Russell's application raises issues now receiving much attention in debates about the adequacy of such naturalism, in particular, problems related to the relationship between folk and scientific conceptual influences on metaphysics, and to the unif…
Scientific metaphysics and social science
Recently, philosophers have developed an extensive literature on social ontology that applies methods and concepts from analytic metaphysics. Much of this is entirely abstracted from, and unconcerned with, social science. However, Epstein (2015) argues explicitly that analytic social metaphysics, provided its account of ontological ‘grounding’ is repaired in specific ways, can rescue social science from explanatory impasses into which he thinks i…
Endogenous choice of institutional punishment mechanisms to promote social cooperation
Towards a New Philosophy of Positive Economics
Imagine asking a typical, well informed, contemporary philosopher whether or not she considered biology to be a science. Our informant, being a philosopher, would not necessarily respond with the straightforward "of course" that would be expected from anyone else. She might first reason through a complicated and heavily qualified definition of science, or she might distinguish certain parts of biology (molecular genetics, perhaps) that she held t…
Rater Agreement on the Reinforcement and Fear Survey Schedules
This paper concerns the report-behavior by outside raters, of reinforcing and fear-producing stimuli for 5 target Ss, on both a Reinforcement and a Fear Survey Schedule. Schedules were filled out by 5 target Ss for themselves and then by available parents and caretakers, as they thought the targets would fill them out. Correlations between the ratings by Ss and the outside raters showed Rater-Rater agreement was greater than Rater- S agreement fo…
Against Positing Central Systems in the Mind
This paper is concerned with a recent argument of Jerry Fodor's to the effect that the frame problem in artificial intelligence is in principle insoluble. Fodor's argument is based on his contention that the mind is divided between encapsulated modular systems for information processing and ‘central systems’ for non-demonstrative inference. I argue that positing central systems is methodologically unsound, and in fact involves a muddle that bears…
Quining Qualia Quine's Way
Thanks largely to Daniel Dennett, I am a recent convert to what many will regard as the shocking hypothesis that qualia do not exist. This admission is not quite a confident sighting of that rarest of philosophical birds, an unequivocally sound and valid argument. For one thing, I have, like many, been frustrated by and suspicious of philosophers' use of qualia for some time, and have often wished them dead (the qualia, not the philosophers); so …
Qualia and Materialism
Though the days of consciousness-raising are mostly passed, the days of consciousness seem to be upon us, or, at least, to be upon philosophers. Dennett's recent Consciousness Explained is the flagship for a flotilla of new major works on the subject, by Flanagan (1992), Jackendoff (1988), Searle (1992), Seager (1992) and others. It seems to be something of a convention in such work that one begins by complaining that consciousness is a sorely ne…
Towards a New Philosophy of Positive Economics
Imagine asking a typical, well informed, contemporary philosopher whether or not she considered biology to be a science. Our informant, being a philosopher, would not necessarily respond with the straightforward "of course" that would be expected from anyone else. She might first reason through a complicated and heavily qualified definition of science, or she might distinguish certain parts of biology (molecular genetics, perhaps) that she held t…
Conceptual Revolutions? How Not to Naturalize the Philosophy of Science
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Reply to Thagard
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Internal Recurrence
Paul Churchland does not open his latest book, The Engine of Reason, the Seat of the Soul , modestly. He begins by announcing, “This book is about you. And me ... More broadly still, it is about every creature that ever swam, or walked, or flew over the face of the Earth” (p. 3). A few sentences later, he says, “Fortunately, recent research into neural networks ... has produced the beginnings of a real understanding of how the biological brain wo…
Folk theories, models and economic reality
In this article, I argue that Williams's sceptical view about the value of economic models expressed in 'The philosophy of economic modelling: a critical survey' [South African Journal of Philosophy, 18(2): 223–246, this issue], and widely shared amongst philosophers of science, is not warrented. Williams's error, I maintain, lies in his failure to adequately distinguish, (a) between theories in general and what he calls 'folk theories', and (b) …
The philosophy of science at the turn of the millenium
Bargaining for Truth and Reconciliation in South Africa
As regimes move from illiberal to liberal, post-transition justice methodology has been employed to engender truth and reconciliation. These normative concepts have evolved into a policy of creating truth and reconciliation commissions that trade civil and criminal amnesty with applicants in exchange for information. This bargained-for exchange can be analyzed as an imperfect information game, where the commission attempts to maximize information…
Learning, cognition and ideology
Invited to give the 2000 Rick Turner Memorial Lecture, I pondered the following question: What explains the fact that the sincere thought of a brilliant and heroic person such as Turner can appear preposterous to me, if bad faith or scholarly ignorance on one side or the other are ruled out, as they should be in this case? I address this question by considering what ‘ideologies’ are from the perspective of cognitive learning theory. I describe th…
Sincerity is Just Consistency
Emotions as Strategic Signals
In this article, we ask how much, if anything, of Robert Frank's (1988, 2004) theory of emotions as evolved strategic commitment devices can survive rejection of its underlying game-theoretic model. Frank's thesis is that emotions serve to prevent people from reneging on threats and promises with enough reliability to support cooperative equilibria in prisoner's dilemmas and similar games with inefficient dominant equilibria. We begin by showing …
Metalinguistic signalling for coordination amongst social agents
Development dilemmas
Introduction Don Ross and Melvin Ayogu Part One: General Perspectives 1. Finance for Development Joseph Stiglitz 2. Globalization: Less Than Meets The Ear? Robert Bates 3. Philosophical Foundations of Normative Economics Daniel Hausman 4. Development Theory and the Philosophies of Science Harold Kincaid 5. The Political Economy of Statistical Evidence: Economic Data Problems in Developing Countries and Their Impact on Empirical Research Hashem De…
Evolutionary game theory and the normative theory of institutional design
In this article, I critically respond to Herbert Gintis's criticisms of the behavioral-economic foundations of Ken Binmore's game-theoretic theory of justice. Gintis, I argue, fails to take full account of the normative requirements Binmore sets for his account, and also ignores what I call the ‘scale-relativity’ considerations built into Binmore's approach to modeling human evolution. Paul Seabright's criticism of Binmore, I note, repeats these …
Every Thing Must Go
In this book, the authors argue that the only kind of metaphysics that can contribute to objective knowledge is one based specifically on contemporary science as it really is, and not on philosophers' a priori intuitions, common sense, or simplifications of science.
H. sapiens as ecologically special
Notions of Cause
We discuss Russell's 1913 essay arguing for the irrelevance of the idea of causation to science and its elimination from metaphysics as a precursor to contemporary philosophical naturalism. We show how Russell's application raises issues now receiving much attention in debates about the adequacy of such naturalism, in particular, problems related to the relationship between folk and scientific conceptual influences on metaphysics, and to the unif…
Ontic Structural Realism and Economics
Ontic structural realism (OSR) is crucially motivated by empirical discoveries of fundamental physics. To this extent its potential to furnish a general metaphysics for science may appear limited. However, OSR also provides a good account of the progress that has been achieved over the decades in a formalized special science, economics. Furthermore, this has a basis in the ontology presupposed by economic theory, and is not just an artifact of fo…
Francesco Guala The Methodology of Experimental Economics
PHILIP MIROWSKI The Effortless Economy of Science
The Alleged Coupling-Constitution Fallacy and the Mature Sciences
This chapter discusses the plausibility of the criticism against the thesis that external factors causally influence cognition and that they are, consequently, partly constitutive of cognition. The discussion should not be taken as implicitly proposing that the opposite theory is true, although the works of Adams and Aizawa suggest that they are defending internalism. This can be attributed to the fact that systems are, by definition, bounded; on…
Naturalism
Epistemology (26 obras) · Philosophy (24 obras) · Sociology (20 obras) · Psychology (18 obras) · Computer Science (17 obras) · Economics (14 obras) · Law (12 obras) · Political science (12 obras) · Economic Theory and Institutions (10 obras) · Philosophy and History of Science (10 obras)